I Saw It in the Flights of Birds
by Alice the Strange
Summary: "I used to dream about flying," she says, softly. She's not talking to him. She's not really talking to anyone. In fact, she doesn't know why she voiced the thought at all, and for a moment she feels so naked she wants to cover her face. But Sherlock only laughs; a little mockingly, a little bitterly, because he has never dreamt of flying, and Molly thinks he probably never will.


~ i saw it in the flights of birds ~

* * *

_up and down  
the ferris wheel  
tell me, how does it feel?  
to be so high  
looking down here…  
is it lonely?_

–norah jones, _carnival town_

* * *

When she was a child she dreamt of flight.

Of course, the memories are very distant now, so far back she shouldn't remember but does, but somewhere in the back of her mind she recalls being young

(_very, very young, _her mind whispers to her, but surely it wasn't that long ago?)

and visiting her father's office in central London, a great glass building like a spire of spun crystal. He works on the top floor and when he takes her upstairs in the mirrored lift that glides upwards, slow and leisurely as an albatross, the first thing she does is run over to press her hands against the window, mesmerised by the plateau of clear, opulent blue spreading out for ever and ever, world without end, the tiny black V's of distant birds dipping and congregating amidst coils of white, frosted cloud.

(That night, Molly goes to bed and dreams that she's trying to fly, and she jumps off the roof of a building over and over again but every time that brief, joyful burst of golden flight inevitably turns into a stomach-wrenching, down-sloping glide and she ends up on the ground below, all scraped knees and gritty red blood, until she just can't get up any longer because her legs refuse to work and she wakes in the cold, dead light of morning, her face bright with tears.)

Finally, she realises that little girls can't fly, and that's just the way things are, and that's the way things will always be, and so she stops dreaming about it. Mostly.

(She's never told anyone that sometimes at night she still feels the scream of wind rushing past her.)

On the day Sherlock Holmes falls, she is watching. She sees him plunge from the roof, black and broken-winged and oh so beautiful, and she thinks of all the times he looked sad when he thought no one could see him

(and Molly shudders, because this is her nightmare; this is what she used to dream of over and over again, and what she prayed would never happen to him, but it is happening, it has happened, she can't stop it now)

and in the distance she hears the sirens sing, but they're too late. They're always too late.

* * *

A few hours afterwards, he's back at her flat – he's in the bathroom with the door locked and she doesn't know what he's doing in there and she doesn't want to know and she's sure as hell not going to ask – and Molly is sitting on the battered snuff-coloured settee, batting one foot absentmindedly against the floor. She doesn't feel right about turning on the television and she can't get her mind to focus on a book. The only thing she can think about, the image that lurks behind her eyelids whenever she closes them like a stalking shadow, is that of Sherlock: arms gloriously outspread like the wings of a dark swan, spinning through space, a fall that in her own head never stops, but just goes on and on, the ground never getting any nearer. A kind of flying, she thinks. Yes. Almost.

Her eyes drift to the window; it's open a crack to let in the air, and evening is coming on, the sun melting sugar against the darkening, red-mottled skin of the sky. She imagines, for the first time in who knows how long, what it would be like to separate herself from the world, from everything, one lone little girl – for inside her own head she still feels like a little girl who's just grown too small for her skin – gazing down at the city's shadowed planes and nocturnal web of lights, the world below her a constellation of blooming sound and heat. And for the first time, she thinks that maybe, just maybe, it might not be as wonderful as she'd always thought it would be.

(Perhaps, she thinks, it would just be lonely.)

At long last, she hears the lock click back and Sherlock emerges, wrapped in a clean white towel, hair damp and those strange colourless eyes distracted. At one time, this sight would have set her blushing and stuttering and torn between catching his eye and trying to avoid his gaze. Now, though, she's preoccupied with her own thoughts, and barely even looks around. She realises she's chewing on her nails again, a habit she thought she'd kicked years ago, and quickly pulls her ragged fingers away from her mouth.

"I put your clothes in the wash," she tells him. "There was blood on them."

"Thank you," he says, and smiles. It's a curious smile that curls up and crackles dryly at the edges, like something that's been left out in the sun for too long. She knows he isn't just saying thank you for washing his clothes, and she smiles back to let him know that she knows. Then silence falls, and she looks once more towards the open window. The faintest memory teases at the edges of her mind – a memory of hot hands against cool glass, gazing down at toylike traffic and dreaming of falling – and a strange kind of yearning rises up in her. She can't name it, can barely place it, but it's _there, _like an empty black hole deep down inside of her, waiting to be filled.

"I used to dream about flying," she says, under her breath. She's not speaking to him. She's not really speaking to anyone. She doesn't know why she voiced the thought at all, and for a moment she feels so naked she wants to cover her face.

But Sherlock Holmes only laughs, a little mockingly and a little bitterly, because he has never dreamt of flying, and Molly thinks he probably never will.

* * *

Weeks after that, she sits down to go through the stack of newspapers, magazine articles and radio transcripts that have accumulated like fallen autumn leaves on her coffee table. Articles about Sherlock. She reads them all; the far-fetched theories, the clues, the questions, the interviews, the alleged sightings, the ones that pity him, the ones that mock him ("The Reichenbach Fall", they're calling it now, and isn't that just so clever of them?) and some of the wilder ones that claim he never died at all, but it's doubtful that anyone will take those seriously. Molly tracks them all, and if you believe every single one Sherlock is dead, alive, in a coma, in Peru, China, Tunisia, New York. Perhaps some of them are correct, but there's no way of knowing.

She wonders how he's doing, and if he's lonely, wherever he is. She knows she would be, but then that's her and this is Sherlock and the two of them are completely different, so once again there's no way of knowing. Not for sure. She folds the papers up, and files them away, feeling not-quite-sad and not-quite-happy.

_Falling._ It's almost a kind of flying, really.

(Yes. Almost.)


End file.
